From Egypt to Japan

by Henry M. Field

The Regent had a wife, and after a time she entered the hall, and welcomed my niece with a cordiality almost like that of two school-girls meeting. She was simply dressed, in the lightest costume, with bare feet, but in gold-embroidered slippers. Everything in her attire was very plain, except that her ears were hung with diamonds that fairly dazzled us with their brilliancy. She began talking with great volubility, and seemed not quite to comprehend why it was that we did not understand Malay or Javanese. However, with the help of our interpreter, we got along, and were soon in the most confidential relations. She had very vague ideas of the part of the world we came from. We tried to make her understand that the world was round, and that we lived on the other side of the globe. We asked why the Regent did not go abroad to see the world? But she signified with a peculiar gesture, as if counting with her fingers, that it took a great deal of money. She asked "if we were rich," to which we replied modestly that we had enough for our wants. As she talked of family matters, she informed us that her lord had another wife. Of this she spoke without the least reserve. It was quite natural that he should desire this. She (his first wife) had been married to him over twenty years, and was getting a little passée, and he needed a young face to make the house bright and gay. Presently the second wife entered, and we were presented to her. She was very young—I should think not twenty years of age. Evidently the elder occupied the first place in the household, and the younger took the second. They seemed to stand in a kind of sisterly relation to each other, without the slightest feeling of jealousy between them. Both were very pretty, after the Malayan type—that is, with mild, soft eyes, and skins, not black, like Africans, but of a rich brown color. They would have been even beautiful if they had had also, what the Africans so often have, dazzling white teeth; but this is prevented by the constant chewing of the betel-nut and tobacco.

At half-past eight o'clock we went to dinner. C—— had the honor of sitting between the two wives, and enjoyed the courtesy of both, who prepared fruit for her, and by many little attentions, such as are understood in all parts of the world, showed that they belonged to the true sisterhood of woman. The position of woman in Java is somewhat peculiar. The people are Mohammedans, and yet the women are not secluded, nor do they veil their faces; they receive strangers in their houses and at their tables; thus they have much greater freedom than their sisters in Turkey or Egypt. The Regent, being a Mussulman, did not take wine, though he provided it for his guests. After the dinner, coffee was served, of a rich, delicious flavor—for Java is the land of coffee—followed by the inevitable cigar. I do not smoke, but could not allow my refusal to interfere with the habits of those whose guest I was, and could but admire the ineffable satisfaction with which the Regent and his friend puffed the fragrant weed. While they were thus wreathed in clouds, and floating in a perfect Nirvana of material enjoyment, the gentler sex were not forgotten. The two wives took their pleasure in their own fashion. A small box, like a tea-caddy, was brought on the table, full of little silver cups and cases, containing leaves of the betel-nut, and spices, cassia and gambier, a little lime, and a cup of the finest tobacco. Out of these they prepared a delicate morsel for their lips. With her own dainty fingers, each rolled up a leaf of the betel-nut, enclosing in it several kinds of spices, and filling it with a good pinch of tobacco, which, our Spanish friend explained, was not so much for the taste, as to make the morsel plump and round, large enough to fill the mouth (or, as a wine-taster would say of his favorite madeira or port, to give it sufficient body); and also, he added, it was to clean the teeth, and to give an aromatic fragrance to the breath! I repeat, as exactly as I can recall them, his very words.

Whether the precious compound had all these virtues, certainly these courtly dames took it with infinite relish, and rolled it as a sweet morsel under their tongues, and looked on their lord with no jealousy of his enjoyment of his cigar.

Here was a picture of conjugal felicity. The family was evidently an affectionate and happy one. The Regent loved both his wives, and they sat side by side without envy or uncharitableness, happy in the sunshine of his face, and chewed their betel-nut with a composure, an aspect of tranquil enjoyment, which many in more civilized countries may admire, but cannot equal.

In the morning, when the family came together, I remarked that the first wife, who then apparently saw her husband for the first time, came forward, and bending low, kissed his jewelled hand; and soon after the second wife entered, and kissed the first wife's hand, thus observing that natural order of precedence which is so beautiful in every well-regulated family.

I observed also with curious interest the relations of master and servant in this Oriental household. The divisions are very marked. The Regent, for example, is regarded by his retainers with an awe as if he were a sacred person. No one approaches him standing. The theory is, that no inferior must ever be in a position or attitude where his head is higher than his master's. If the Regent but looks at a man, he drops as if shot with a bullet. If a servant wishes to communicate with his master, he falls, not on his knees, but on his haunches, and in this posture shuffles forward till he comes behind his chair, and meekly whispers a word into his ear. He receives his orders, and then shuffles back again. In one way, the division of ranks in Java is more marked even than that of castes in India. The Javanese language, which is a branch of the Malay, has three separate forms of speech—one, that used by a superior addressing an inferior; second, that of an inferior addressing a superior; and a third, that used between equals. Such divisions would seem to cut off all relations between those of different rank. And yet, with all this stooping and bowing, abject as it seems to us, the relation of the master to his dependants is rather patriarchal; and to these same servants the Regent will speak, not only kindly, but familiarly, all the more so as the lines are so drawn that there is no danger that they should ever presume on undue familiarity.

In the morning the Regent took me out for a ramble. We strolled along under the trees, admiring the beauty of the country. After half an hour's walk, suddenly, like an apparition, an open phaeton stood beside us, with two beautiful ponies, into which the Regent invited me to step, and taking his seat by my side, drove me about the town. We returned for breakfast, and then he sent for his musicians to give us a performance, who, beating on drums and other native instruments, executed a plaintive kind of music. With such attentions did this Javanese prince and his wives (none of whom we had ever seen till a few hours before, and on whom we had no claim whatever) win our hearts by their kindness, so that, when the carriage came round to the door, we were sorry to depart. The Regent pressed us to stay a month, or as long as we would. We could not accept a longer hospitality; but we shall remember that which we had. We keep his photograph, with others which we like to look upon; and if these words can reach the other side of the world, they will tell him that his American friends have not forgotten, and will not forget, the kind manner in which they were entertained in the island of Java by the Regent of Magellang.

The drive of to-day was hardly less interesting than that of yesterday, although our pride had a fall. It was a great come-down, after riding with six horses to be reduced to four! But the mortification was relieved by adding now and then, at the steep places, a pair of buffaloes. As we were still in the hill country, we were all day among the coffee plantations, which thrive best at a considerable elevation above the sea. Other products of the island flourished around us in rich abundance: the spices—aloes and cassia, and nutmeg and pepper. And there was our old friend, the peanut. They were gathering perhaps the very nuts that were yet to ornament the stands of the apple-women of New York, and to be a temptation to bootblacks and newsboys. Amid such fields and forests, over mountain roads, and listening to the roar of mountain streams, we came down to Ambarrawa, a place of note in Java, as containing the strongest fortress in the island. It is planted here right in the heart of Middle Java, where, half a century ago, was a formidable insurrection, which was quelled only after an obstinate contest, lasting five years—from 1825 to 1830. Ambarrawa is connected by railroad with Samarang. It is easy to see that both the railroads which start from that point, and which have thus a base on the sea (the one leading to Solo and Jookja, the residences of the Emperor and the Sultan, who might make trouble, and the other to the great fortress of Ambarrawa), have been constructed with a military as well as a commercial purpose.

So the Dutch have had their wars in Java, as the English have had in India; but having conquered, it must be said that on the whole they have ruled wisely and well. The best proof of this is the perfect tranquillity that reigns everywhere, and that with no great display of armed force. What a contrast in this respect between the two most important islands in the East and West Indies—Java and Cuba! They are about equal in the number of square miles. Both have been settled by Europeans for nearly three centuries, and yet to-day Cuba has less than two millions of inhabitants, and is in a chronic state of insurrection; while Java has over fifteen millions (or eight times as many), and is as quiet as Holland itself. The whole story is told in one word—the one is Dutch rule, and the other is Spanish rule.

We spent our Easter in Samarang—a day which is not forgotten in this part of the world, although Sunday is not observed after the manner of Scotland or New England, but rather of Continental Europe, with bands playing on the public square, and all the European world abroad keeping holiday. From Samarang, another two days' sail along the same northern coast, with the grand outline of mountains on the horizon, brought us back to Batavia.